If the length of my life were measured in seasons, summer has passed, and fall is ending. That means I’m on the brink of winter, the final season — or already in it unaware. Fact is, I’m old!
In his most recent collection of poems, my favorite living poet writes about that final season of life. He calls it “the stern privilege of being old.” Wendell Berry should know. Ninety-one years old and author of more than fifty books, he is still active as poet, novelist, essayist, farmer, and fellow Kentuckian.
All these years, Berry has addressed old age in both fiction and poetry. Jack Beechum, a “very old man” and the protagonist of Berry’s 1974 novel The Memory of Old Jack, mused over his advanced age. He thought of those who had already made their “departure” and knew it was “one of the inescapable themes” of life. Departure not only for his friends and family, but for himself. “Having put his foot into the furrow, he [Old Jack] has not looked back, though he has known that it must deepen into a grave.”
Despite these inescapable themes of old age and departure, Berry’s characters and poems are never self-pitying or sentimental. Old Jack simply said, “another hinge has turned.” Life had changed. That is all. Old Jack’s neighbor, Jayber Crow, agreed without commentary: “Well…time will make mortals of us all.” Another added, “Yes, if we don’t die first.”
These old characters make me smile. Yes, old age is out there. Yes, the hinge turns. Yes, the furrow will deepen to a grave. We just reckon with it.
After Old Jack’s death, his nephew Mat mulled over his uncle’s “level-footed” life. Old Jack “stood unconditionally...straight as a tree and…charged with purpose and with strength,” even in hard times. Old Jack reminds me of the Psalmist David who said, “I have set the Lord always before me…I shall not be moved” (Psalm 16:8).
Old Jack was first published when Berry was just 40 years old. At 81, Berry comes back once again to the theme of old age as he has all those years. In Poem VII (2015) from his newest collection, Another Day: Sabbath Poems 2013–2023, he writes:
What a wonder I was
when I was young, as I learn
from the stern privilege
of being old….
The poem recounts his youth when he was “regardless” of how he stepped on “rough pathways” and persistent when he worked “unachingly hard days.” Now, he is old, yet life is still a privilege, though “stern.”
In a long dream poem written when Berry was 89, his tone is again matter-of-fact: “You have begun your journey from all you know to all you don’t” Poem 1 (2023). Berry’s narrator looks back on his life as the faithful husband of “one woman only.” He remembers the death, ugliness, greed, war, and ignorance he experienced. But at the end, he looks ahead as the dream brings him to the Sabbath morning where he “at last may come to rest.”
In other Sabbath poems, Berry writes, “Times will come as they must….and grow scarce.” But that scarcity of time is merely “the Real, the wholly real.” In Poem XIV (2013), he adds:
The old dog with her gray muzzle
and I with my fringe of white hair
please ourselves by nearness to the fire
inside while outside the birds answer
their calling to stay alive.
Berry admits, “We all now have fewer days than we had yesterday.” Yet he seems unruffled. Thoughts of aging and “fewer days” are simply “the Real, the wholly real.” Berry began the first line of that poem with the words of Jesus in Luke 20:38: “For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living.” In the final line, he comes back to the Lord: “The Kingdom of God is life itself.”
I love Berry’s writings — poems, novels, essays. They are rooted in ordinary life and often even Christian life. Yet he does not say all I need or want to know as I stare ahead into that “stern privilege” of old age.
And so, I move on to Flannery O’Connor. Flannery died of lupus at age 39 in 1964, and she is far more blunt than Berry. In a letter dated September 6, 1955, she said to a friend, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it….there are long periods in the lives of all of us…when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints.”
In 31 short stories and two novels, O’Connor dealt with the impudent young and the shrewish old, many in the dark night of the soul. Some received grace. Many others faced the dark night alone, resentful, and without faith. Even her “good ones” were often hard to admire. Life of whatever length was not often pretty in O’Connor’s fictional world.
When “standing on the world’s edge,” as Berry says about old age or “on the verge,” as O’Connor calls it, we don’t necessarily feel it is a privilege of any sort. Nevertheless, we can face the fact we will come “at last to the great edge and keep on going,” as Berry says.
So what are some takeaways from this talk of the stern privilege? Here are ten:
In my 80s, I’m in the unknown. I see what is behind — what once was — but I see ahead through dense fog. Still, I don’t have to lose heart. I can say with Paul, though my outer self is wasting away, my inner self is being renewed daily
(2 Corinthians 4:16).
Truthfully, I often feel vulnerable. I have no control over what lies ahead and perhaps little choice. That’s frightening. I may, somewhere up ahead, have to cede all control, all choices to others — family, caretakers, medical professionals, and ultimately the Lord’s timing.
For now, I admit my limitations. I have walking issues that restrict my choices. I don’t like strictures; I don’t like pain. I’m prone to whine. But I adjust, recognizing many my age suffer terribly all day, every day. My pain is a splinter, theirs
a sword.
I want to be gracious, though “gracious” is not my middle name. Often, I fail. I don’t want to allow the “milk of human kindness” to sour in my soul. A friend’s parent was a belligerent booger in his last years. Uncooperative and miserable, he made everyone around him miserable. I don’t want to do that.
The Psalmist David said, “I shall not be moved” (16:8). I, too, want to stand firm, yet know when to be flexible, to be compliant for people who care and to circumstances I don’t like.
I practice gratitude. Someone called gratitude the dialysis of the spirit because it flushes self-pity and complaining from our souls and prevents “making a martyr” of ourselves, as C. S. Lewis said. In his farewell address, Samuel advised the Lord’s people to “consider how great things he hath done for you” (1 Samuel 12:24). I must remember…and be grateful.
I must acknowledge wisdom is not automatic just because my hair turns gray (or turns loose). I don’t know everything, despite these collected decades.
Sometimes, I need to “let go.” Someone said, “Letting go doesn’t mean giving up; it means giving over” to the Lord (1 Peter 5:7) and to His helpers — my helpers. I’m trying.
Now in my 80s, the future feels weightier, heavier, so I move with more caution, both physically and in decision-making. I watch my steps. I weigh my choices.
I’m counting on something new. I lean on what John heard in Revelation 21:3-7, a loud voice from the throne that said, “I make all things new.”
All things new. Praise to the loud voice from the throne. Amen and Amen!
About the Writer: Brenda Evans lives and writes in Ashland, Kentucky.
